UN atomic agency that hunts for nuclear weapons

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The International Atomic Energy Agency, which won the Nobel
Peace Prize today along with its chief Mohamed ElBaradei, was
created almost half a century ago to spread peaceful nuclear
technology but has jumped to the forefront of the battle to stop
the spread of atomic bombs.

The IAEA was set up as the UN's "Atoms for Peace" organisation
in 1957.

Since 1970, it has also been the verifier of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), taking its inspectors to hot spots
Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

The NPT was designed to keep atomic weapons from spreading
beyond the five major powers who then had such arms - the United
States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

But in 1998 India and Pakistan exploded nuclear bombs in tests
two weeks apart.

Israel is also believed now to have the bomb, although it
neither confirms nor denies its nuclear military potential.

These three nations are not signatories to the NPT and so are
outside IAEA inspections.

The IAEA was the lead agency in investigating Iraq's nuclear
program when Saddam Hussein was in power.

ElBaradei's pleas for for more time to complete inspections went
unheeded, however, before the US-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The agency also ran inspections in North Korea until being
kicked out of that country in December 2002.

Analysts are divided as to whether North Korea's efforts to
develop nuclear weapons have yielded concrete results.

Iran, under investigation by the IAEA since February 2003, is
accused of being the emerging nuclear weapons threat.

The United States asserts Iran is secretly developing nuclear
weapons and has demanded that Tehran give up all its uranium
enrichment activities.

The IAEA has found Iran in non-compliance with the NPT for
almost two decades of hidden atomic activities and is threatening
to take Tehran before the UN Security Council, which could impose
sanctions.

Even without a covert program, however, analysts say nations can
develop the know-how to make atomic weapons while strictly adhering
to the NPT, which does not ban enriching uranium.

ElBaradei has called for an international effort to fix the
loopholes.

"For those of us who have worked as custodians of the treaty for
over three decades, it is clear that events of the past few years
have placed the NPT and the regime supporting it under
unprecedented stress, exposing some of its limitations and pointing
to areas that need to be strengthened and adjusted," ElBaradei said
in a speech last year.

North Korea, for example, left the NPT in early 2003 once it had
achieved a technological level sufficient to make nuclear weapons,
leading the IAEA to refer the case of North Korea to the Security
Council.

But the United Nations has refrained from imposing
sanctions.

ElBaradei said the "lesson, illustrated by the evolution of the
North Korean situation, is that we cannot afford not to act in
cases of non-compliance (with the NPT)."

The Security Council's failure to act "may be setting the worst
precedent of all, if it conveys the message that acquiring a
nuclear deterrent, by whatever means, will neutralise any
compliance mechanism and bring about preferred treatment," he
said.